The Brain Bag project is more than a year old.

It seems like the time flew by and as we looked at what we could to refresh the bag and its contents for this new bunch of Brain Bag babies, we found some updates to the Baby Steps book were in order.

The Brain Bag project was launched in 2017 at all three of Escambia County's major birthing hospitals. Baptist, Sacred Heart and West Florida hospitals have been handing out the bags to new mother an fathers, along with a lesson on the importance of parent talk and interaction in healthy early brain development.

So far nearly 6,000 parents have received the early literacy gift  bag before they left the hospital with their bundle of joy. The bag also comes with a lesson, delivered by the nursing staff, about why it is so important for moms and dads — and everyone in a baby's life — to talk and interact early and often with children in the first three years of life.

In this critical window of the first 1,000 days, the kind of interaction that parents and families have with a baby or toddler is vital for a healthy growing brain. A key to that strong early growth is time spent with loving adults.

Talking, reading, singing and playing with a bay, from the first days all the way to the first day of school is how healthy brains are nourished.

Experts say that the more language-rich a young child's environment is, the better chance that child has of being ready for school. And not only must that home be rich in words and stories, but also it must be rich in love and warm responses to a child's first attempts at interacting with the world.

Research shows kids who lack this safe, nurturing, word-rich interaction are less likely to be ready for school. And in our community, the sad truth is that too many of our children are falling into that category. 

Data from the Florida Department of Education tells us that this past school year, only 46 percent of our kindergartners were ready for school. Some 1,500 children came to the schoolhouse doors with the skills to decipher the shapes of all the letter, transform them into the matching sound. Or to count to 20 and name all of their colors. Or to follow more than three directions given at the same time. Or to wait turns or sit still for a story.

At Studer Community Institute, we believe the journey of changing that statistic starts before a new parent leaves the hospital. That's why we developed the Brain Bag project from a model used in other Florida communities. 

We think it is working. At least based on what moms who have received the bags tell us. We ask moms to rate their knowledge of how parent talk influences early brain development before the Brain Bag, and then rate it after.

Here’s what the moms so far have told us: 

— West Florida: 6.5 to 9.4.

— Baptist: 6.5 to 8.9.

— Sacred Heart: 6.7 to 9.75.

— Overall: 6.5 to 9.5

This tells us that the lessons given by nurses and the tools in the Brain Bag are giving parents more confidence to use the Three T’s to Tune In, Take Turns and Talk More with their babies. That's what Jeanell Mangum shared with us. She was one of the first moms to receive a Brain Bag.

Her son, Levi, was born at Sacred Heart last June. 

“I loved the Brain Bag,” Jeanell said. “It was so, so helpful, especially as a first-time mom. And Levi loved the book.” 

That's how we believe change in our community must start, one family at a time.